


A Shot in the Dark

by AMX004_Qubeley



Category: Affinity Unbound
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:52:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15532659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMX004_Qubeley/pseuds/AMX004_Qubeley
Summary: A Creaden should have had mastery over earth, air, space, or spirit; Yori did not. So she mastered something else. If she couldn’t have an affinity, she reasoned, she would make her gun her affinity; the song of bullets and scent of gunpowder would be her blessing from the gods.





	A Shot in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radiocabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiocabel/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Affinity Unbound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10977300) by [radiocabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiocabel/pseuds/radiocabel). 



> This is a birthday present for my best friend Maddie, who writes [Affinity Unbound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10977300/chapters/24443421).
> 
> Happy birthday, Maddie! Have some special gays on your special day!

_Sine affinitas._

That was the _polite_ way to say it. If someone wanted to be nasty about it, they’d call you _unblessed_ instead, really dig dirt in your snout, remind you that the gods’ graces were intangible to you. The days were long past when anyone but the staunchest and most stuck-up traditionalists would straight-up call you _soulless,_ as everybody else would constantly tell those who were without affinities to remind them of society’s progress from the dark days of pre-industrial society. But whether it was _sine affinitas_ or _unblessed_ or _unloved_ or _godless_ or _soulless,_ when someone wanted to use those words to hurt you, it _stung._

Corporal Yori Bellevoir, border guard for the nation of Sabine, was part of the unlucky half of society that felt the sting of those words.

In the beginning, they said, no one had affinities, neither Creaden nor Simenti. Then one day, long after Omnia had been created, the gods had created two gemstones, a shining ruby and a brilliant sapphire, that had each contained a fraction of the deities’ boundless cosmic power. They gifted the gems to their beloved peoples, granting them all unique mastery over the forces of nature, and from then on, these abilities known as affinities—because they were a sign of the gods’ love—were passed down through the generations.

Today, less than half of all Creaden and Simenti alike had affinities; with each passing year, less and less children were born with the so-called blessing of their gods. Yori could take some small comfort in the fact that she was in good company—although, of course, depending on where one lived, that company could prove hard to find.

Yori remembered the long nights spent obsessing over affinities when she’d been a little girl. Having to study how they worked twice as hard as her peers because they had personal experience with their own affinities and she had nothing. Nothing could match the withering feeling which had grown stronger year after year through her adolescence when friends left and right had been manifesting their affinities at long last… only for Yori to wait. And wait. And wait. Her mother had been a late bloomer, too. But after twenty years, Yori gave up and accepted she was just a perpetual bud.

Even now, as a young adult with a promising military career ahead of her, a refrain from her adolescence sometimes still rang through her head:

_It’s not fair. I’m supposed to have one too, aren’t I? I did everything I could, but I still don’t have anything._

A Creaden should have had mastery over earth, air, space, or spirit; Yori did not. So she mastered something else.

Yori let her slender, dexterous paws drift across the lovingly-polished oaken stock and blue-gray steel barrel of her rifle. She was a sniper for the Sabinese military, the best in her class and perhaps the best sharpshooter to ever grace Sabine. Sniping had been her most earnest passion from an early age. When she laid a furry finger on the cold, sleek steel trigger, she felt as though she had added a new limb to her body; when she peered with a sharp, clear amber eye through the scope, she felt as though she could see _through_ the world into something beyond.

Her sharpshooting skills gave her a clarity of mind and of purpose that Yori otherwise lacked. With the gun’s comforting weight as a companion, Yori found a way to belong, if not to this world, then to another—A world of subtle sights and sounds, of picking out in the darkness the faintest of lights and the slightest of sounds no matter the distance. If she couldn’t have an affinity, she reasoned, she would make her gun her affinity; the song of bullets and scent of gunpowder would be her blessing from the gods.

Yori’s tail swayed back and forth and swept over the grass as she peered through her scope, hidden from her prey’s attention by her slow, cautious movements and by the thick, grassy ghillie coat blanketing her body. Her long ears twitched forward as they caught the sound of grass crumpling under a dainty hoof, hunter’s instincts singing in her blood. Nostrils flared, filled with an earthen, musky scent.

Her prey appeared in her sights, every detail of its tawny coat laid bare under her gaze. She almost hesitated, but her stomach churned and gurgled in protest and spurred her on.

A single shot rang out with a sharp, brisk report, shattering the calm that enveloped the forest, and with one shot—you only ever got _one shot—_ a stag fell to the ground, stone dead.

Yori left her position and crept toward her fallen prey, nearly salivating. Since the train crash that had stranded her and two others—Private First Class Elric Inocencio, her childhood friend and comrade, and Calina Shaori, a runaway former member of the infamous Thieves’ Guild who had gotten tangled up in their mission—in the vast neutral territory between Sabine and Catol with little in the way of supplies, she’d gone days without a filling meal.

But as she drew closer to the felled beast, she felt a twinge of queasiness bordering on nausea. She was no hardened soldier, merely a new recruit fresh out of basic training. She had never taken another life before—neither friend nor foe, neither Creaden nor Simenti nor beast. Guilt led her to stand over the deer’s corpse and pause, bowing her head, as if an act of reverence could ease its spirit’s departure.

Stowing her rifle in her sling, Yori knelt down and tried to lift the stag, steering clear of its magnificent rack of antlers. It was too heavy for her. Perhaps she could drag—

_“Didja kill it?”_

Yori nearly leaped out of her fur at the sound.

Calina Shaori ran across the clearing after her, skidding to a halt in front of the deer’s carcass. Unlike Creadens’ luxurious pelts, Calina’s skin, though smudged with dirt and grime, was a pale cyan; her mussed and matted hair, laden with leaves and branches, was brilliant ochre. She knelt before the deer, examining the bloody coin-shaped hole between its eyes and whistling.

“Whoa. Hell of a good shot, Yori.”

Yori smirked. Praise was nothing new to her, owing to her prodigious sniping skills, but there was something different about the way _Calina_ complimented her. Not even that she was so uncouth about it, just… something about her voice, rough and abrasive as the rest of her. “Thanks,” she said. “Can you help me, though?” she asked. “It’s kinda heavy.”

Calina’s eyes lit up. “Of course I can!” she boasted, dusting off her hands. “Just watch!”

She picked the deer up and slung it over her shoulder, letting its massive body dangle limply, its dainty legs brushing the ground. While her toned muscles coiled like serpents under her skin, she made such a feat of strength look nearly effortless. Yori was awestruck, but did her best to keep her composure.

“Wow,” Yori whispered.

“Hey, we all got something we’re good at,” Calina said, smiling, a little twinkle in her eyes. “You shoot. I lift.”

Returning to the camp, Yori couldn’t help but let her eyes wander all over Calina. Sure, she was a little rough around the edges. Sure, her hair was full of sticks and leaves. Sure, she dressed like a tornado that had passed through a thrift shop. Sure, she wasn’t exactly the freshest-smelling Simenti in the world (although Yori was hardly one to talk after a few days lost in the woods). But she was gorgeous, and would probably be even _more_ gorgeous if someone gave her some clean clothes and a bath.

Dinner was good that night. With her trusty butterfly daggers, which Calina seemed to love nearly as much as Yori loved her rifle, Calina had expertly carved up the deer, then roasted it over an open fire. Yori wasn’t much for venison, and the meat was lean, tough, gamy, and completely unseasoned, but hell, it was _food,_ and it beat MREs _._ Elric, a consummate vegetarian and not one to compromise any of his principles, stuck to what little rations he, Yori, and Calina had between the three of them, but Yori and Calina went to sleep with bellies full of meat.

* * *

Yori and Elric took turns keeping watch through the night, wary that the Thieves’ Guild could very well still be in hot pursuit, even after the crash. Calina, though, slept like a rock, if rocks could snore and frequently kicked people in the middle of the night.

Calina was a runaway from the Thieves’ Guild. Unfortunately, the Guild had wanted her back, or rather, had wanted the apparently-valuable butterfly swords she’d purloined back, and weren’t afraid to kill to take back their own. People were _dead_ because of Calina’s foolish and reckless actions.

But Yori couldn’t blame Calina for wanting to run. The Guild were criminals, after all. Maybe deep down, Calina wanted to go straight?

 _Boy, I sure_ hope _she doesn’t want to go straight._ Yori chuckled to herself at her little bit of wordplay.

 _I’m not letting her off easy just because she’s cute, am I?_ Yori wondered. _No, it’s because she’s not a bad guy, she’s just tangled up with a bunch of other bad guys. She’s as much of a victim here as we are. I mean, it’s not like I_ like _her, it’s not like I can’t stop thinking about—_

_Oh, gods. I can’t stop thinking about her._

_I mean, I had fun flirting with her back on the train, but that was—_

_That was just_ fun, _I didn’t think I really—_

_Oh, gods, Yori, you useless lesbian._

Yori did what she usually did to take her mind off of things that were troubling her, and began stroking the barrel of her rifle. _Seventy-five percent saltpeter, fifteen percent charcoal, ten percent sulfur. Seventy-five percent saltpeter, fifteen percent charcoal, ten percent sulfur. Seventy-five—_

_“Boo!”_

In the split second that followed, Calina learned the hard way that surprising someone with a gun was a bad idea. Of course, the gun wasn’t loaded, and of course, Yori was a staunch proponent of proper trigger discipline and knew better than to put her finger anywhere _near_ the trigger of a gun unless she was 100% ready to shoot it, but Calina didn’t know that. She looked as though she’d seen a ghost— _her_ ghost.

Feeling more than just a little ashamed, Yori set her gun aside. “Oh, gods, Calina, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Geez, Yori! I almost shit myself!” Calina began to nervously laugh off her embarrassment. “Watch where ya point that thing…”

“I-It’s okay! It’s not loaded!” Yori insisted.

“Wait. So if anyone from the Guild popped in here in the middle of the night, you were just gonna _point_ that at ‘em and hope to _scare_ ‘em away?”

Yori shrugged. “Well, um, it worked on _you,_ didn’t it?”

“Good point.”

“They’d be right to lose their shit,” Calina said. In the dark of the night, with only a few embers from a dying fire to cast a little light on her, her smile was hidden by shadow—but Yori could hear the brightness in her voice. Calina rested her hands on her chin. “You’re a _goddess_ with that gun.”

“A-A goddess, huh?” Yori resisted the urge to start wagging her tail. She let her thick ghillie coat slide off her shoulders and pile on the ground behind her. At least it weighed down her tail so it wouldn't embarrass her. “H-Heh. I mean, I dunno about that, but I try…”

“So, how do you do it? Line up those perfect shots?” Calina crawled a bit closer. “Bet you’ve got some affinity that makes you see or hear really good. Eagle eyes? Eagle ears? Do eagles _have_ ears?”

Yori felt like she’d had a bucket of cold water dumped on her head.

What would she do? Lie and say she had an affinity that augmented her sharpshooting skills? Or say, no, it was all her, no blessings from any gods, just plain old Yori with her plain old mortal skills honed with plain old mortal practice, because when the gods didn’t love you, you had to make do?

“U-Um…”

 _Would Calina think I was a freak, or broken, or some sort of heathen if I told her I didn’t have an affinity?_ Yori asked herself. _Am I stupid to worry about it?_

The world was a better place than it was. That’s what everyone said. _Sine affinitas_ weren’t burned at the stake anymore, after all, they hadn’t been for hundreds of years, and society at large acknowledged that you weren’t a soulless abomination who’d somehow fallen out of the gods’ favor if you didn’t have an affinity, you were _born_ that way, and it was okay.

But that didn’t stop kids from lording it over you on the playground when they could throw things through walls and you couldn’t, and it didn’t mean that smarmy little shits at the Sabine military academy wouldn’t rub it in your snout that _they_ would _always_ be superior soldiers because the gods loved _them_ and they didn’t love _you,_ and it didn’t mean people wouldn’t pass you up for anything unless you were willing to work twice as hard for half the results. It didn’t stop you from constantly wondering what your parents really meant when they said they loved you, thinking to yourself, _Do they ever ask each other if they did something wrong to have an unblessed for a daughter? Do they pity me? Are they afraid for me?_

“Yo. Earth to Yori.”

Yori realized she’d spaced out, blinking a few times before slowly reaching for her trusty rifle, hoping the smooth barrel of her closest companion could soothe her through this crisis.

She didn’t want Calina to dislike her. Sure, Calina probably had low standards. But how low did some loser with no affinity rank to her?

“I, um…” Yori took a deep breath. “I don’t… um… have. An affinity. At all.” She crossed her arms. “Never did. Never will…”

“ _Holy shit!”_ Calina shouted out, nearly bursting Yori’s eardrums. Yori hoped she wouldn’t wake Elric—he was already pretty grumpy after everything that had happened involving Calina and the Guild, and if Calina woke him up, he’d probably not be in a _better_ mood. “So that’s _all you?_ Damn, girl! You really _are_ a sniping goddess!”

For a few seconds, Yori was dumbstruck. She let her arms hang at her sides. “You… don’t care?”

“Hell, no.” Calina laughed. “It’s way cooler to line up those headshots on your own than to depend on some cheap trick from some dumb god!”

“Y-Yeah, uh, I guess it is…” Yori let herself laugh. Despite her relief, her anxiety hadn’t quite worn off yet and still had its cold fingers around her heart.

“If you ask me, the whole thing’s just stupid,” said Calina. “The gods are just morons who loved huffing each other’s farts, and so are all the jerks who think they can do cool stuff because those cosmic assholes gave ‘em an extra dose of fart gas or whatever.”

“It really sucks, you know?” Yori admitted. “Half of us don’t even _have_ affinities. How can you act like it’s not _normal_ to be _sine affinitas?_ In this day and age, to act like half the world is sinful or godless just because we don’t have magical powers is just insane.” She buried her face in her paws. It hurt, thinking about all the times someone like Disada or Nunki had lorded their affinity-augmented skills over hers, but it felt good to voice her complaints. Especially to Calina. Elric had always offered his shoulder to cry on—he always understood her, because even though he had an affinity of his own, he imposed his own limits and stuck by them—but it felt good to confess to this buff, sexy urchin girl, too.

Wait. Did Yori just think of Calina as _sexy?_

“Pfft. How do you think _I_ feel? My ‘buddies’ back in the Guild could do all kinds of cool shit like, summon a shield out of flames to burn anything you threw at them, or spy on you through ponds, or do cool stuff with time. And then there’s me. I can…” Calina rolled her eyes. “Hide good. People just don’t notice me if I don’t want ‘em too. Nothing flashy, nothing exciting, my skin doesn’t even turn invisible or change color or anything. Boooooriiiiing!”

“I’d take that,” Yori admitted. “A tiny, stupid blessing sure feels better than none at all.”

“Hey, it’s no big deal,” Calina said. “Affinities are dumb, actually.”

“Tell that to Disada Turlough.”

“Who?”

Yori sighed. “Just some jerk from the academy.”

Calina gave her a hefty little pat on the shoulder, assuming from Yori’s tone everything she needed to know. “I mean… I guess society just has a hard time catching up with the world. The world’s all like, ‘maybe affinities were actually a kinda dumb idea and that’s why you fartwads aren’t getting ‘em anymore,’ and society’s still all like, ‘blaugh, affinities make you cool and important,’ and you’re kinda…”

“Stuck in the middle.”

“Like a turd stuck between two ass cheeks,” said Calina.

“That’s the most beautiful thing anybody’s ever said about poop,” said Yori.

“I know. I’m a real poet.” Calina leaned against Yori’s shoulder, her tangled and snarled hair brushing against Yori’s cheek.

Yori felt her blood rush beneath her skin, beneath her fur, an odd tightness and warmth in her chest that slowly began to travel downward. For all her self-control, Yori felt her tail begin to thump happily against the ground as it wagged back and forth, betraying the feelings she was trying to bury. _Think about gunpowder. Think about gunpowder. Think about gun—_

“Hey, you Creaden fuzzballs are really soft,” Calina murmured, sinking into Yori’s shoulder and yawning.

‘Fuzzball’ sounded an awful lot like the kind of epithet some Simenti hooligan would shout at you in a bar, but when Calina said it, it felt like high praise.

“And you’ve got killer abs,” Yori found herself blurting out.

“Huh? I mean, I haven’t really built up my core, but…” Calina laughed. “You sure do love guns, huh? I’ll…” She let out an uncontrollable yawn. “When the Guild’s off my back, the two of us… we’ll set up the biggest, bestest gun show in Omnia.”

“You like guns, too?” That was a surprise. If Calina was a gun aficionado too, Yori finally had someone to talk her tail off about all the minutiae of gun ownership, sharpshooting, maintenance—

“I _got_ guns.” Calina raised her left arm and flexed, then her right arm, showing off her biceps. Granted, Yori couldn’t see much in the darkness. “Two of ‘em. And _they’re_ pretty big, too.”

Yori burst out laughing. Really, she should’ve seen in coming.

While she was still struggling to contain her laughter as it echoed through the clearing and bounced off the trees, Yori felt something heavy land in her lap.

It was Calina’s head.

Yori suddenly felt very, very, _very_ uncomfortably warm, but not all over. Like a humid summer day from her waist down and a brisk autumn night from the waist up, excluding her face. This wasn’t the first time Calina had been bold enough to make a pillow out of Yori’s thighs, but…

This time felt different.

 _Thank the gods she’s not lying facedown,_ Yori thought. That wasn’t to say she _didn’t_ want Calina burying her snout in her lap. Just not right _now._

Yori laid down, closed her hands, and blindly let her fingers feel their way through Calina’s hair, tugging on errant twigs and leaves and plucking them out. The runaway thief complained a bit at first, especially when Yori worked through a particularly tangled-up piece of the forest caught up in her locks, but soon settled down and let Yori do her work.

Yori wasn’t sure why Calina had wanted to run away from the Guild.

That girl was probably the best thief she’d ever seen.


End file.
